


Between Us.

by Sarie_Fairy



Series: Fictober 2020 [11]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Episode: s08e13 Per Manum, F/M, IVF arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26983078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarie_Fairy/pseuds/Sarie_Fairy
Summary: FICTOBER Day 12 - Prompt: “not interested, thank you.”(Dialogue from Per Manum written by Chris Carter & Frank Spotnitz)
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Series: Fictober 2020 [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951573
Comments: 18
Kudos: 66





	Between Us.

There was such a vulnerability about her when she’d asked him. Like she expected him to say—“not interested, thank you.” 

If he were a different person, if they were a different pair—who freely expressed their thoughts and feelings, rather than their way of extracting and extrapolating, he would have said something other than his cryptic, “I just wouldn’t want this to come between us.” 

He would have told her that he ached for her. Ached, yearned, longed for and desired her. And every other way he could have said it. That at times he couldn’t breathe around her. That he sometimes couldn’t breathe without her. 

His hesitation wasn’t because he didn’t want her to have his child. 

It was his heart, you see.

It was a flash through his mind, of Scully. Long after chasing monsters. Diapers and sleepless nights folding over into school drop-offs and a job with predictable hours, releasing her back into a world where someone might have the chance to hold her focus. Where someone might charm her with a life. Help her out of that car, or one very like it—dangling picket fences and BBQs, a dog and sex every Tuesday night. 

A future where a faceless man would be invited to know her more completely than Mulder had ever been allowed. He would woo her and treat her the way she deserved, though he probably wouldn’t deserve her, and he would never truly _see_ her. And one day—her small pragmatic, headstrong child, overflowing with wonder and passionate curiosity—would innocently call him ‘Dad’. 

And Mulder would sink into the Earth, feel a pang in his chest, when it happened, hear it echo and reverberate through his empty apartment. Empty soul.

If they were a different pair, straightforward and honest with one another, he would have said that he wanted to be the father to her child. To _their_ child, so that they might be a family. 

And he would have explained to her, that if their cells didn’t become one, that they still could. That he was her family, that child or no child, he always would be. 

He _would_ have told her that he loved her. But he didn’t, because they were not like that. Because—was there really a chance that she didn’t know? That he was fiercely in love with her?

The more he thought on it, the more he felt that perhaps she did know, and that would mean; she didn’t want him. That is, all except for a tiny piece, to take away.

So he said _yes. Of course. Yes._ Because telling the woman that he loved ‘no’, _no_ he would not help her fulfil a dream of hers, when she was running thin on time and hope, was not an option. Because Scully deserved the world, even if he wasn't in it. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be posting something new each day in October for Fictober from this tumblr [prompt list](https://fictober-event.tumblr.com/post/628547358001594368/fictober-event-the-prompts-for-2020%22).
> 
> Subscribe to the series [here](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951573)
> 
> Thank you for reading. Comments most welcome 💕


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